Schwartzlist
By Gary Schwartz This question was asked by a Dutch newspaper last spring. At the time I did not get around to answering it. What they were after were experiences related to the students and workers revolt in France and other revolutionary manifestations of the Spirit of 68. My first reaction was that I was…
Read Moreby Gary Schwartz It is not too late to commemorate the 400th anniversary, earlier this year, of one of the great inter-civilizational gestures of early modern times. On January 3rd, 1608, a delegation of Discalced Carmelite monks, arriving in Isfahan from Rome via Kraków, presented to the Moslem Shah Abbas I one of the most…
Read MoreBy Gary Schwartz One in so many Western works of art contains an image of a person we would call black. The phenomenon attracts relatively little attention in art history. The Menil Foundation went after it seriously, in a project now inherited by the Warburg Institute. An exhibition in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam offers…
Read MoreBy Gary Schwartz In 1942, in fulfillment of an essay competition announced in 1936, the Teyler’s Second Society in Haarlem published the winning study on the spread of Dutch painting throughout the world: Horst Gerson, “Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts” (The diffusion and after-effect of Dutch 17th-century painting). Written in German-occupied…
Read MoreBy Gary Schwartz I would not go as far as my travel companion and say that I am sorry that I ever saw the exhibition. But it comes close. In December, at the Sackler Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we went to “Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity.” To shock and awe you unprepared,…
Read MoreBy Gary Schwartz Israeli-Dutch Artist Joseph Semah’s Full Moon Project Five years ago next month I ran into a buddy of mine at Café Luxembourg in Amsterdam. The Israeli-Dutch artist Joseph Semah and I had been through challenging times together. In 2001 he had challenged me to come up with an adjunct to his performance…
Read MoreBy Gary Schwartz The Rijksmuseum has published the first volume in a series of scholarly catalogues of its collection of Dutch paintings of the 17th century. The two books, one of text and comparative illustrations, the other of color plates, are not only a model of collection catalogues, they are also an unguarded kaleidoscopic self-portrait…
Read MoreBy Gary Schwartz Is there or is there not such a thing as “the Dutchman?” My fellow immigrant Princess Maxima thinks there is not, but since she dared express that opinion in public last September, she has been subjected to an ongoing barrage of reprimands. Indeed, since the brief era of Pim Fortuyn, public discourse…
Read Moreem>The initial reactions by Rembrandt specialists to the Cotswolds painting were nearly all marked by caution.
Read MoreSome of the best moments of my visit to documenta XII I spent in bed. Even though Loekie and I had decided this time not to try to see everything and to spend as much time on a display as we wanted, and even though we stuck to this strategy and enjoyed the exhibition all…
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Music Commentary: New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Fest versus French Quarter Fest